Main article: UK
2023
Number of people waiting to see doctor hits record 7.77 million
According to data available for November 2023, the number of people waiting to see a doctor in Britain has reached 7.77 million people. This indicator is the highest since registration began in 2007.
The British Ministry of Health failed a megaproject on EDO and spent $1.46 billion on the storage of paper documents
In early October 2023, it became known that the British National Health Service (NHS) was unable to implement a large-scale project to completely transfer the healthcare industry to electronic document management (EDO) on time. Instead, huge funds have been spent on organizing the storage of paper records. Read more here.
She poisoned with insulin and pushed the tubes into the body. British nurse found guilty of killing 7 babies
In mid-August 2023, a British jury found nurse Lucy Letby guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six more newborns. She is sentenced to life in prison without parole. Read more here.
The Ministry of Health will distribute free of charge a million electronic tobacco heating systems with the condition of quitting smoking for two years
In early 2023, it became known that the British Department of Health will distribute one million electronic tobacco heating systems for free to help as many citizens as possible abandon traditional cigarettes. The main goal is to reduce the number of smokers by 2030 to below 5% of the population. It is this threshold that the WHO considers sufficient to recognize the state as' smoke-free '.
Tobacco smoking is known to be one of the main preventable causes of disease and mortality worldwide - about 2/3 of smokers die from the effects of this bad habit. The British Department of Health believes that smokeless technologies for nicotine consumption are less harmful than ordinary cigarettes and have significant potential in helping smokers abandon the bad habit. The same conclusion was also reached by the Ministries of Health of New Zealand and Canada, which came up with initiatives urging smokers who do not refuse to consume cigarettes to switch to electronic nicotine-containing products.
The main condition for people joining Britain's national 'swap to stop' programme is a commitment to quit within the next 2 years. For their part, the organizers will offer maximum support to participants by developing a special digital platform and sending people to smoking cessation centers. At the same time, British Health Minister Neil O'Brian announced payments to pregnant women of £400 in return for quitting smoking (it is estimated that in Britain 9% of women continue to smoke during pregnancy).
At this time, there are no analogues of the national British program 'swap to stop' - an initiative that encourages citizens to abandon cigarettes in favor of less harmful smokeless products is unique. The creators of the project do not doubt the effectiveness of innovative measures - after all, according to British statistics, smokeless products help to quit smoking cigarettes from 50 to 70 thousand Britons every year. Today, smokeless devices are the most popular means of quitting smoking in England: out of 2.8 million users, 1 million continue to smoke, and 1.5 million have completely abandoned the bad habit. At the same time, among those British who quit smoking, about 1.3 million used electronic cigarettes or electronic tobacco heating systems (ESNT), but ultimately were able to abandon them.
"I welcome and support the new British national project," said Professor Riccardo Polo, founder of the CoEHAR Research Center for Cigarette Smoke Reduction at the University of Catania. - We will follow the further developments, but it is already clear that this is a revolutionary step, which, we hope, will be repeated in many other countries. It is a specific and rational action of health policy. Not only will the initiative help millions of smokers quit for good, it will guarantee the British government unprecedented savings in healthcare costs. "
2022
British doctors are given VR glasses for visits to patients. They are needed for remote consultations and EDO
Nurses in a number of areas of England will receive virtual reality glasses when visiting patients at home. VR devices are planned to be used for remote consultations and electronic document management. Also in the National Health Service of Great Britain (NHS) expect that gadgets will help improve the quality of service. This was reported on August 20, 2022 by Bloomberg. Read more here.
Polio was found in sewage in Britain. Emergency vaccination of children started
On August 11, 2022, a polio vaccination program for children aged 10 was announced in the UK. The program comes after more polioviruses were found in London's sewage, suggesting the virus has already spread across the city. Read more here.
British Ministry of Health disposes of unused personal protective equipment for doctors for $5 billion
As it became known in June 2022, the British government allocated about $5 billion for the disposal of unsuitable personal protective equipment purchased in the context of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. This was announced by the Committee for the Control of Public Spending.
In total, it is planned to dispose of 15 thousand containers with PPE per month "by a combination of processing and burning for energy," while adding that "the costs and environmental impact of recycling excess and unsuitable PPE are unclear."
The government said that not all equipment worth $5 billion will be burned. The Ministry of Health said that PPE alone worth about $835 million was "unusable in any context." It said some of the excess stock would be repurposed for use by dentists or donated to charities, transport agencies and other countries.
In its report, the accounts committee found that the Department of Health lost 75% of the £12 billion spent on PPE in 2020 during the spread of the pandemic due to inflated prices and defective products.
Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Meg Hiller, who chairs the committee, said the PPE situation was "perhaps the most shameful episode in the UK government's response to the pandemic."
 | The government squandered huge sums of money by paying indecently inflated prices and payments to intermediaries in a chaotic rush during which they refused even the most cursory scrutiny, she said. |  |
On June 10, 2022, Government Minister Robin Walker admitted that "mistakes" were made at the beginning of the pandemic. But he said it was a "completely unprecedented situation" with countries around the world frantically trying to acquire the necessary materials during the health crisis.[1]
In Britain, the queue for planned operations exceeded 6 million people
In mid-April 2022, in Britain, the queue for planned operations exceeded 6.18 million people, according to data from the National Health Service. Some complex patients may be counted multiple times if they expect more than one procedure, and the department's particular concern is the length of time some of these patients wait for care.
Elective surgeries can mean anything from cataract surgery to hip replacement; surgeries that may not be in the urgent category but may still leave untreated patients leading painful and limited lives. In some cases, delays in optional procedures can cause long-term harm. Although waiting times worsened even before the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), in hospitals it is rare for patients to be on the lists for more than a year. In February, 23,281 patients waited 2 years or more for routine procedures.
In 2021, active work was carried out to increase the number of planned procedures, and special attention was paid to those patients who waited a very long time. But the ongoing waves of COVID-19, as well as emergency activation in the country in winter, made progress difficult. For April 2022, health chiefs are Great Britain likely to focus on rapidly worsening ambulance response times. The sector is in the midst of a crisis, with high demand, staff shortages and bottlenecks in the flow of patients in hospitals preventing ambulances from transferring patients in a timely manner.
On April 14, 2022, several looser infection prevention and control rules were announced in an attempt to free up beds. The compromise was the increase in the risk of the spread of nosocomial infections COVID-19. As COVID-19 cases decline after the second wave this year, pressure on hospitals and ambulance services may begin to ease. But with infection rates still high and new options and sub-options regularly detected, UK NHS chiefs fear the next global wave of planned surgery cases could come in the summer of 2022.[2]
2021
Members of the British Parliament receive kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies through APPG
At the end of June 2021, researchers from the University of Bath said that pharmaceutical companies provide MPs of the British Parliament with hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in the form of kickbacks. The pharmaceutical industry has created a "hidden network of political influence" over dozens of All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs), sending them hundreds of "opaque" payments as part of lobbying, the researchers said. Read more here.
Reducing smoking to 13%
In 2021, the prevalence of smoking in England was 13% - the lowest on record. The country was able to achieve this result thanks to measures such as doubling the duty on cigarettes since 2010, continued funding for local smoking cessation services and a flexible approach to the anti-tobacco campaign based on state-of-the-art scientific evidence. As experts predict, if other countries of the world take measures to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco, as in Britain, a decrease in the share of smokers could be up to 25%. This approach will achieve the goals that all governments strive for: reducing the level of premature mortality and improving the quality of life of citizens.
Number of weeks of paid maternity leave
in
2020
Duration of guaranteed paid sick leave 6 months or more
85% of citizens would agree to vaccination against COVID-19
2019: Blockchain could kill Britain's tax and medical systems
At the end of October 2019 McKinsey , John Straw, a senior employee of the consulting company and an expert at Business 5.0, said he blockchain could kill the tax and medical systems. With Britain this forecast, Straw spoke on behalf of McKinsey and at IBM a recent Computing Cloud and Infrastructure Live event on the Business 5.0 model. More. here
2017: Number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses
1959
15th century:
In 2010, hundreds of unidentified graves were excavated on the grounds of St John the Theologian's Hospital in Cambridge. This medieval hospital was founded in 1195 and lasted until the 16th century. Archaeologists have discovered almost 400 complete and partial skeletons in the hospital cemetery.
It is known that the hospital was created for charitable purposes for the "poor and infirm"; among those held in it were also people who donated their property to the hospital in exchange for food, clothing and housing for the rest of their lives.
Now experts have studied these bones to try to create a picture of the lives of poor and disadvantaged people who died in Cambridge in the XIII-XV centuries. To this end, up to 50 individual characteristics were obtained for each buried, including DNA features, stable isotope content, skeletal pathology. It turned out to be one of the richest datasets of medieval people ever collected in England. According to the researchers, this allowed them to look "behind the scenes of the hospital."
It is known that about a dozen patients, a staff of 4-6 clergy and several servants were constantly in the hospital. According to the charter of the hospital, pregnant women, lepers, wounded, and mentally ill were not admitted to it.
From the Treatise on Medicine, England, 15th century.]]
What kind of people are buried in the cemetery?
It turned out that the buried did not belong to a single social class, but included several heterogeneous groups, including orphans, patients of different categories and even scientists. A group of so-called "ashamed poor" stands out - people who once lived safely, but survived difficult times: illness or other circumstances that prevented work, the loss of a spouse, parent or breadwinner. In all cases, the choice was simple: starvation or, if you are very lucky, a charitable institution.
Very young children are absent from the cemetery; the vast majority of those buried are adults, 60% men and 40% women. At the same time, a significant part of them died at a young age. Compared to other medieval cemeteries, these people have a relatively low injury rate, but many clearly had a difficult childhood and often have signs of tuberculosis. A significant part of the "tuberculosis" died between the ages of 18 and 25. Described, for example, a woman 150 cm tall with very strong shoulder bones, apparently engaged in hard physical labor all her life. She died before she was 25 from spinal and pelvic tuberculosis.
At the same time, judging by isotope analysis, many at the end of their lives ate worse than in childhood.
Almost all non-adult individuals have signs of anemia, as well as severe infectious diseases. About a third of them have rib lesions indicating chronic respiratory diseases. Apparently, these young people were experiencing the most severe hardships. Many, and perhaps even most of the inhabitants of medieval English cities belonged to the working poor, did hard and sometimes dangerous work. They probably fed on the cheapest foods, and any illness, injury, job loss or price increases threatened them with hunger. But below these poor, there seems to have been another layer: the "hereditary poor," who whether they worked or not, suffered from need as a normal daily condition. Some of the young people buried probably belonged to this layer. They are the most stunted people of all those buried in Cambridge's medieval cemeteries.
In addition to the legacy of a difficult childhood - low carbon and nitrogen isotopes in dentin, small height, enamel hypoplasia and other signs of physiological stress - many people have signs of intense physical labor.
For example, a buried PSN331/Burial 900, a woman 151 cm tall who died between the ages of 46 and 59, has the most powerful shoulder bones of any person in the sample. The woman lifted and carried weights until something, possibly a foot infection, prevented her from working.
Isotope analysis revealed at least 3 people who arrived at the hospital from afar. One is a young woman (aged 18-25) who Scotland Norway France spent her childhood in Wales,,, Brittany, central or beyond. The woman was found to have genetic similarities with the Dutch and Scandinavian populations.
The second visitor is a young man (aged 18-25) who has arrived either from overseas or from west Wales, Cumbria or the Highlands of Scotland. The two may have come to Cambridge for trade, but died unexpectedly and so ended up in a hospital cemetery.
The third "nonresident," apparently, was a scientist. It must be said that the 10 male skeletons allegedly belonged to university scientists. Experts made this conclusion on the basis of the symmetry of the bones of their hands: these people, unlike most other young men from the cemetery, never did hard work. At the same time, they had a decent childhood, they did not differ in very poor health, they ate relatively well; most lived to be 35. It is known that the support of "poor scientists" from Kemrbij, who found themselves in a difficult situation, was one of the missions of the hospital.
The authors of the study launched a website, "After the Plague," dedicated to the stories of several people whose biographies scientists learned through the study.
Among such characters is a stocky dark-haired man with the conditional name Wat: as a child he ate well, survived several waves of the Black Death, but hard times came, nutrition deteriorated, including, possibly, due to the loss of teeth. Shortly before his death, Wath broke his spine, three ribs on his left side and injured the palm of his right hand, most likely in a fall. He was one of the weakest people in the population. He died of cancer that affected his pelvis, spine, skull and other bones, at the age of about 60.
But Margery. An elderly woman of strong build, blue-eyed, with blond hair, her height is 162 cm. In adulthood, she broke two right ribs. By the time of her death, she had very bad teeth. She suffered from a serious infection of the spine. The story that her skeleton tells is very sad: tooth decay, osteoarthritis, back damage. At the same time, it must be understood that for a medieval person this meant success: we see a scarred woman who survived, unlike many, to adulthood.
But little Dzhankin, he was not so lucky. Born in a remote area north of Kemrbij, he grew very slowly, had thin, fragile bones, suffered from anemia, although he ate well. He had a chronic infection in his left knee, constant headaches due to a brain infection. He died at the age of 3-4 from meningitis, tuberculosis or sepsis. A typical story for about half of all babies born in that era.
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